For all of us, our past shapes our present. And I am no different.

I was born and raised in a "grace-based legalistic church". Grace was applied to those areas the church leadership felt were appropriate such as the moment of conversion, dress (we wore shorts to church) and the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, what we could read, watch or whether we could have a Christmas tree were defined by convoluted legalistic rules. We were saved by grace and trying to grow under law.

Looking back I am puzzled as to how we decided that grace applied to wearing shorts to church but did not to body piercing, secular education or reading books by Catholics.

Only recently has God brought freedom to my life by destroying the man-made curtain that divided the sacred and the secular. This essay is written out of that experience and a deep desire to help others find freedom from similar pasts. I don't have all the answers. This is just my attempt to put in words what God has graciously shown me through people like Mark Driscoll, the folks at the Highway Community (my church) and others in the emerging church movement.

The early church was faced with the false doctrine of Gnosticism shortly after the ascension of Christ. The doctrine taught the separation of spirit and matter, or the body. The spirit was sacred and matter was secular. This false doctrine finds its roots in the dualistic philosophy that the Greek philosopher Plato introduced to Western thought.

Gnosticism has come and gone and is no longer a threat to modern Christianity. However, the underlying philosophy of dualism is just as much alive and well in Western Christianity as it was in the early church. Many of us have separated our lives into two distinct realms: the sacred and the secular.

In the secular realm, we work, pay our bills, go to school and participate in popular culture to some extent. In the sacred, we pray, talk to God and find spiritual meaning. The more we can remove ourselves from the distractions or pollution of the secular the more "spiritual" we believe we are.

What most of us find is an extreme disconnection and tension between the two realms. We live in the secular world during the majority of our day and feel a little guilty that we are so "worldly". Or we develop an intense fear and distrust of anything secular, longing to be free from the world.

What is the solution to this tension? For many, it has been to expand the sacred world. Create a sacred subculture that has all the same features as the secular world but has a Christian stamp of approval.

Create our own clubs where everyone believes the same things, listens to the same music and knows the secret handshake. What safety! Everything within our club is neatly defined and we all know where everyone else stands based on their ability to keep the club rules.

We will stamp "Christian" on music, movies, education, careers and friends. We will retreat into our subculture and limit our contact with the secular culture as much as possible. We will be safe in our newly created sacred world. We create extra biblical rules that, like a teacher's checklist, help us quickly critique an individual's "Godliness".

Of course there is not a single subculture for all of Christendom. For one group, the criteria for sacred music is hymn style and for another, Christian punk might be okay. What specifically is sacred and secular is not important but rather the fact the distinction exists at all. In most cases the rules are defined by church leadership who have special knowledge about what is "pleasing" to God and usually are rather convoluted (as with my past).

But one thing that seems to be common: few members of the subculture ever examine or question its existence. Few look at its place in relationship to the gospel.

The Bible is clear that Jesus came to set captives free and to proclaim the favor of God. If we are to be about that same mission we must be willing to examine the current Christian subculture in light of the gospel mission.

Some observations I've made about how the Christian subculture affects our ability to carry out that mission of the gospel:

1. We lose our ability to relate to unbelievers. As we retreat into the Christian subculture we lose the ability to speak the same language and to understand the context that the gospel needs to be presented. Secular culture is nothing more than the values, beliefs, hopes and dreams of the people we are trying to reach. When we totally remove ourselves from it, we miss out on the greatest tool that we have to understand those who need Christ.

2. The communication of the gospel is hindered. The Christian subculture has its own "Christianized" language and it becomes very difficult to communicate effectively with those outside that subculture. Effective communication is based on understanding the context and the symbols associated with the culture

If we have nothing in common, don't understand their world, and can't speak their language, how can we hope to reach them?

3. We limit our contact with and move in separate realms than those we are called to love and reach. Any good relationship, which is the foundation of evangelism, must begin with personal contact. By removing ourselves from the secular world we minimize this contact. I know many Christians who can't think of one friend that is an unbeliever.

4. Christians never learn how to think about Christianity in the "real world". I had friends in college who once exposed to the "real world" of secular education began to question what they had always believed. Their Christian subculture had no room for tension, doubt or free thought and subsequently their faith crumbled under pressure. Isolation might protect us in the short-term, but we will reap the long-term consequences.

5. Christian subculture helps support a Pharisaical culture of rules designed to keep people conformed to the "image" of Christianity. The more we congregate in the subculture, the stronger the "rules" of the subculture (legitimate or not) get. i.e. drinking, smoking and tattoos are clearly wrong, but why? Does anybody know? And why do we care so much? All this congregating in the subculture alone puts our eyes on one another, rather than the world that so desperately needs to be reached.

There was a religious subculture that is very similar to what we see today during the life of Christ. The Pharisees mastered external holiness and had well defined rules what it meant to be "Godly". Their name means "separated ones". Jesus makes it clear that they had missed the point. God didn't want them to retreat into a separate subculture. Rather He wanted their heart; he wanted to use them as His instruments of love to His people.

Jesus had no illusion of a sacred and secular world. He lived in the "world" without conforming to it. His extensive use of parables illustrates His command of the local culture and His ability to use that understanding to speak truth.

I believe and I hope have communicated that the worldview that creates a separation between the secular and sacred is not God's intent. Retreating from the world into a Christian subculture creates a small and weak God, ties up His people with legalism and hinders the good news from being lived out where it is needed the most.

Part 2 of this essay examines how we can use popular culture to teach us more about God and help us reach the lost and respond to the argument that I am promoting "worldliness" or watered-down Christianity.